The ninth installment of the Fast & Furious series, now titled F9, released a teaser trailer ahead of the full trailer drop later this week - but beyond that, the franchise has officially been rebranded as "The Fast Saga". After the release of F9 this coming May, there will be one more Fast & Furious movie slated for release in 2021 before the core films conclude (or, at least, that was the plan).
The adrenaline-pumping action franchise first kicked off in 2001 with The Fast and the Furious. It followed an infamous street racer, Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), and an undercover LAPD officer, Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker), as they faced the life of street-racing. As the series progressed, Brian became like a brother in the eyes of Dom as their crew went up against crime lords, terrorists, and government agencies. Even after Walker's untimely death, Diesel carried the franchise and lifted the cast to keep moving forward. Nearly two decades and seven sequels later, the franchise is still going strong with the planned releases of Fast & Furious 9 and Fast & Furious 10.
The recent promotional material for F9 are prioritizing the Fast & Furious franchise's rebrand as The Fast Saga. The title is now the Twitter handle of the official franchise account and it appears on the posters for F9. In December, the account shared posts of the previous movies in the epic saga as a way to lead up to the trailer and build hype for "The Road to F9" trailer release event on January 31, 2020. The Fast Saga's stamp on the franchise might have a deeper significance, though.
Fast & Furious Has A Future Beyond The Fast Saga
Universal Pictures, the studio behind The Fast Saga, is clearly rebranding the franchise as a marketing initiative. By using the term "saga", there's an extra sense of excitement surrounding F9. The grandiose rebrand transforms the entire franchise into one big major event that was two decades in the making. Sagas are meant to represent a very long story, something that Fast & Furious can justifiably claim. But like every saga, the story eventually comes to an end. Just look at the marketing playbook from Star Wars and how they used The Rise of Skywalker as the end of the Skywalker saga.
By using The Fast Saga as the title of the core films in the franchise, it sure seems like Universal is admitting that the story surrounding Dom and his crew will soon come to a close. Since the term is only being used for the main films of the series, all signs are pointing to the franchise spreading in different directions after The Fast Saga concludes. Hobbs & Shaw, the first spinoff from the series, debuted in 2019. There's talk of a sequel as well as a female-led spinoff in the near feature. The franchise also premiered the animated Netflix series, Fast & Furious Spy Racers. Years from now, F9 and the rest of the films in The Fast Saga might just be a small piece of the broader Fast & Furious franchise if it continues to expand.
